Who is Twitterati?

April 13, 2010

Twitterati is a very popular term in blogosphere and in social networks that is used as a reference to Twitter influencer. So Twitterati is obviously a very influent Twitter user.

But I couldn’t find any agreed-upon criteria that could be used to define Twitterati.

Sure, you can find the section called Twitterati on alltop.com. But this is just an opinion of a popular online resource, not a set-in-stone rule.

I’m not sure about the origin of this world. But even if one can assume that this term originated at alltop.com, it obviously over-grown the barriers of any particular site and became a noun in English language, just like “Google”.

Google is not a company name anymore. The meaning of this word serves as a general representation of search engines per se (sorry, Microsoft), and is deeply interwoven in different layers of American culture.

The same thing is happeing with the term Twitterati.

Everybody sort of understands the meaning of this word yet it remains amazingly vague.

So, what criteria could be used to define this elusive term?

Number of Twitter followers?

Not the most accurate criterion but one can observe that all Twitteratties have over 50,000 followers. (I would say over 100,000 followers, but it’s not true since many of them have following in a range of 70,000 to 100,000).

Number of Retweets? That’s a dark alley since this number can be easily played.

What else then? The popularity of their blogs?

May be, but it’s not directly related to Twitter and hence to the term Twitterati…

So what could be a definition of Twitterati?

Your thoughts?

Related posts:

  1. The Power of Influence in Social Networks or Does the Size Matter?
  • http://www.professordaddyo.com @professordaddyo

    I’d say the term would refer to Twitter giants e.g. Scoble, Solis, etc. Not that newcomers cannot achieve such a moniker, but it would take some hard work. I plan to be in that group soon, good post BTW.

  • webnews

    yes, but what is a “twitter giant”? How many followers such individual should have? What could be other factors to define his/her position as a Twiterati?

  • http://popimpulse.blogspot.com @DonCarlitos

    Intangibles such as “influence” and quality of followers must be defined & factored in. In addition to quality of links, frequency of link clicks, & the number of conversations undertaken. #FF mentions can also be a useful measure. The algorithm is getting bigger.

  • Ricram72

    Assuming it comes from glitterati – but twitter is multi national and crosses boundaries of class / style / money in bank / fame etc then a twitterati can be any individual tweeter deemed as being worthy of the title

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